System and method for concurrent electronic conferences

ABSTRACT

Method for scheduling and implementing an electronic meeting conducted among remotely-located users communicating with an agenda server, including: accepting a meeting agenda that includes a plurality of topics, a quorum, an identification of resources used by each topic, an identification of data used by each topic, and an identification of data produced by each topic; partitioning the meeting agenda into at least a first and second group of topics; searching for data dependencies between the first and second groups of topics; searching for resource dependencies between the first and second groups of topics; if data dependencies or resource dependencies are found between the first and second groups of topics, then repartitioning the meeting agenda until the data dependencies and resource dependencies between the first and second groups of topics are reduced below a predetermined dependency threshold; and concurrently scheduling and executing the first and second groups of topics.

BACKGROUND

1. Field of the Invention

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention pertain toconcurrent electronic conferences and, in particular, a system andmethod to schedule and conduct concurrent electronic conferences.

2. Description of the Related Art

Meetings are often used in a professional or educational setting todisseminate information, such as via a setting such as a lecture, atalk, and so forth. The setting may be organized as a one-to-manymeeting (e.g., a professor lecturing to students in a lecture hall),many-to-one (e.g., a briefing by several team members to one executive),or a mixed scenario (e.g., a panel discussion that includes bothprepared remarks and a question and answer session).

Meetings may also be used to stimulate information and furtherdiscussion. For instance, discussion among researchers of a problem maystimulate identification of additional approaches to solve the problem.

Conduct of meetings can be facilitated via a meeting agenda. The agendawill generally help plan a meeting by identifying the topics to bediscussed, and identify assigned participants for the topics and theroles or credentials of the assigned participants. The agenda may helpparticipants and other meeting attendees to prepare for the meeting,making the meeting more productive as judged by information exchanged,decisions reached, and so forth. The agenda is useful to guideparticipants regarding the goals of the meeting and identify when themeeting may be straying from achieving the goals. Therefore, the agendais a useful tool to help manage the meeting and make efficient use ofthe attendees' time.

A meeting agenda generally comprises a list of several topics, and thelist is used to stimulate agenda-driven topic discussions. The topicsmay differ in the number and/or identity of preferred or requiredparticipants. Furthermore, a single participant may have different rolesfor different topics (e.g., a presenter for one topic, but a decisionmaker for another topic).

The meeting schedule may change dynamically during the course of ameeting. For instance, participants' schedules may change during ameeting. The agenda may be shuffled such that topics are moved around inthe schedule, or added, deleted, or combined with other topics.

Meetings often include concurrent discussions. For instance, acomplicated problem may include one or more subcommittees to study theproblem or aspects of the problem in greater detail, after which thesubcommittee is charged with a duty to report findings andrecommendations to the full meeting. For example, at a standardsmeeting, subcommittees may be formed to study the relative technicalmerits of various proposed alternative solutions. Subcommittees may havetheir own agendas and quorum requirements apart from the agenda andquorum for the meeting as a whole. Subcommittees offer the opportunityfor the meeting as a whole to benefit from the expertise and in-depthstudy provided by the participants of the subcommittee, without undulyusing resources of the meeting attendees as a whole.

Various scheduling processes for generic meeting scheduling problems areknown in the art, but the known processes suffer drawbacks. For example,the known processes consider meetings as independent events rather thanfully considering interdependencies. Furthermore, the known processes donot address dynamic changes during meetings.

Agenda planning, meeting management, and the meeting itself can beassisted by or conducted via on-line tools. Examples of available toolsinclude OpenMeetings, Avaya Web Conferencing System, Persony, web.alive,WebEx, Big Blue Button, and IDEAL Conference.

OpenMeetings is an open-source browser-based software application thatallows a user to quickly set up a conference via the Internet. A usercan use a microphone or webcam, share documents on a white board, sharethe computer screen and record meetings. OpenMeetings is available ashosted service or can be downloaded and installed on a server withsubstantially no limitations in usage or users.

OpenLaszlo is an open-source platform for development and delivery ofmultimedia-rich Internet applications. OpenLaszlo applications can bedeployed as Java servlets, which are compiled and returned to thebrowser dynamically. This method requires that the web server is alsorunning the OpenLaszlo server. Alternatively, OpenLaszlo applicationscan be compiled from LZX into DHTML or a binary SWF file, and loadedstatically into an existing web page. This method is known as SOLOdeployment. Applications deployed in this manner may lack somefunctionality of servlet-contained files, such as the ability to consumeSOAP web services and Java RPC remote procedure calls.

Avaya Web Conferencing System allows users to set up an online dataconference, in which users can communicate using a range of methods.Data conferencing, audio conferencing, and video conferencing aresupported.

Persony web-based conferencing is a web and video conferencingapplication. Users can share a desktop display, give a salespresentation, see others using high-definition webcams, or conduct awebinar, all from a private web conferencing site. Participants can joina meeting via substantially any web browser and computer.

Avaya “web.alive” is an online subscription-based conferencing servicethat can be used for hosting meetings, leading training sessions, and soforth. A host subscription includes features needed to engage anaudience online, and offers high-definition positional voice, filesharing, presentations, desktop sharing, co-browsing, avatarcustomization, web integration, self administration, etc.

Cisco WebEx is a web conferencing product that lets participants connectwith other persons online in real time. WebEx combines desktop sharingthrough a web browser with phone conferencing and video, so participantssee the same thing while a host conducts the conference.

Big Blue Button is an open source web conferencing system built usingopen source components in order to create an integrated solution thatruns on a plurality of computing platforms.

IDEAL Conference is a product that integrates data and voice withinstandard web browsers. IDEAL Conference enables people to conductmeetings over the Internet from a computer with a network connection anda web browser.

A drawback of the known art is that they do not adequately support theinteractions found in electronically-assisted meetings. For instance,there is little or no notion of agenda and topics. A moderator manuallyhandles meeting dynamics (e.g., keeping the meeting focused andon-schedule), and concurrent discussions are handled manually byarranging for multiple meetings. Furthermore, existing web conferencingproducts make inefficient use of the participants' time. For example, aperson who desires to participate in a portion of a meeting (e.g., aconference, public meeting, or the like) but who does not need to attendthe entire conference generally has two options. First, the person canattend the entire meeting from start to finish. This will unnecessarilywaste the person's time as topics are discussed that have little or nointerest to the person.

Second, the person can estimate from a published agenda or the like whentopics of interest will be discussed, and attend the meeting during theestimated times, with or without some buffer time for expectedvariations between the published agenda and an actual pace of themeeting. Disadvantages of this approach include that the actual pace ofthe meeting may differ from the published agenda, resulting in missingtopics if the pace is quicker than expected and exceeds any built-inbuffer time, or unnecessarily waiting if the pace is slower thanexpected and thereby wasting time. Or, the topics may be discussed outof order from the published agenda, which again results in missingtopics.

Furthermore, in a large meeting, there may be topics that are ofinterest to non-overlapping groups of attendees. The overall meetingtime can be shortened and concurrency improved by scheduling concurrentbreakout sessions. Such breakout sessions may be scheduled in advance orscheduled in an ad-hoc manner, such that the breakout sessions arescheduled to start at around the same time, and scheduled to end ataround the same time. A disadvantage of this approach is that it may bedifficult to schedule breakout sessions having roughly equal length andappealing to substantially non-overlapping sets of attendees. Theresulting subject matter division among the breakout sessions may bevery granular, thereby reducing the achievable gain from the concurrencyof the breakout sessions.

Therefore, a need exists to provide improved subject matter schedulingin a meeting and, in particular, for an improved system and method toschedule and conduct concurrent electronic conferences.

SUMMARY

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention improve the subjectmatter scheduling in a meeting and, in particular, allowing a person whodesires to participate in, for example, a portion of a meeting (e.g., aconference, public meeting, or the like) but who does not need to attendthe entire conference, to utilize their time more efficiently byreducing the overall meeting time and by reducing the amount of wastedtime, and by improving the probability that they will be present for atopic of interest, while reducing the probability that they will not bein attendance for a topic of interest.

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention may provide amethod for implementing an electronic meeting, wherein the electronicmeeting is conducted among remotely-located users via one or morecommunication links with an agenda server, the method comprising thesteps of: accepting, by the agenda server, a meeting agenda comprising:a plurality of topics; an identification of resources used by eachtopic; an identification of data used by each topic; an identificationof a quorum for each topic; and an identification of data produced byeach topic; assigning topics to at least a first group of topics and asecond group of topics, such that there are no data dependencies orresource dependencies between the first group of topics and the secondgroup of topics; and concurrently scheduling the first group of topicsand the second group of topics.

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention also include anability to provide a meeting snapshot (i.e., an electronic “peek” at themeeting status at a selected time). The electronic peek may be used inorder to electronically provide in a controlled way a current status ofthe meeting, and/or what topics have been discussed, attendance,upcoming agenda items, and so forth.

Optionally, the system may further include a memory coupled to theprocessor, the memory configured to store instructions such that, whenthe instructions are performed by the processor, the processor performsthe steps of implementing an electronic meeting, wherein the electronicmeeting is conducted among remotely-located users via one or morecommunication links with an agenda server, the method comprising thesteps of: accepting, by the agenda server, a meeting agenda comprising:a plurality of topics; an identification of resources used by eachtopic; an identification of data used by each topic; an identificationof a quorum for each topic; and an identification of data produced byeach topic; assigning topics to at least a first group of topic and asecond group of topics, such that there are no data dependencies orresource dependencies between the first group of topics and the secondgroup of topics; and concurrently scheduling the first group of topicsand the second group of topics.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

So the manner in which the above recited features of the presentinvention can be understood in detail, a more particular description ofembodiments of the present invention, briefly summarized above, may behad by reference to embodiments, which are illustrated in the appendeddrawings. It is to be noted, however, the appended drawings illustrateonly typical embodiments encompassed within the scope of the presentinvention, and, therefore, are not to be considered limiting, for thepresent invention may admit to other equally effective embodiments,wherein:

FIG. 1 illustrates a schematic view of system in accordance with anembodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 2 illustrates an architecture for an agenda server in accordancewith an embodiment of the present invention; and

FIG. 3 illustrates a method for identifying and implementing concurrente-meetings in accordance with an embodiment of the invention.

The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and arenot meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or theclaims. As used throughout this application, the word “may” is used in apermissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather thanthe mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). Similarly, the words“include”, “including”, and “includes” mean including but not limitedto. To facilitate understanding, like reference numerals have been used,where possible, to designate like elements common to the figures.Optional portions of the figures may be illustrated using dashed ordotted lines.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention targetopportunities for making meetings shorter, more effective, and morerelevant to the attendees by automatically exploiting concurrencyinherent in the agenda of a meeting. This approach provides moreefficient meetings by: integrating an agenda into an e-conferencesystem; transforming an agenda into actual meeting minutes; provide fordynamic meetings in which agenda items can be added, deleted, moved,combined, and/or divided; handling the dynamics in an automated manner;providing enhanced user control of the meeting dynamics; and providingfor and managing concurrent meetings. All of this may result in moreeffective and more efficient e-conferences.

As used herein, the term “module” refers generally to a logical sequenceor association of steps, processes or components. For example, asoftware module may comprise a set of associated routines or subroutineswithin a computer program. Alternatively, a module may comprise asubstantially self-contained hardware device. A module may also comprisea logical set of processes irrespective of any software or hardwareimplementation.

As used herein, the term “meet” or “meeting” refers to a communicationsession, generally at a pre-arranged time. The meeting may be conductedin person, or may be conducted electronically. As used herein,“conference” and “meeting” are used interchangeably unless a distinctmeaning is indicated otherwise, either explicitly or clearly in context.

Many meetings are inherently sequential. For such meetings,substantially every attendee of the meeting is required to receive someinformation, or provide some input. Therefore they all participate atthe same time. Some meetings, in which one or more key decision-makers(e.g., a boss, a town council meeting, etc.) must receive someinformation, take action, and/or approve of action, are also inherentlysequential.

Some contexts, though, allow for concurrency: two or more topics can beaddressed at the same time. This is most often seen when committees meetat the same time to address different issues that converge on the sameproblem. For example, if an organization has a need to reduce its budgetacross the board, the individual departments may meet in parallel toplan budget cuts within their departments. Or, in the context oftechnical conferences, sessions having substantially non-overlappingsubject matter can be identified (e.g., for a conference devoted tocommunication technology, a session devoted to RF methods and a sessiondevoted to optical methods; or a session devoted to customer service anda session devoted to new business development), and participants canself-select which session to attend.

Information developed or presented at meetings may be transferred byother more efficient methods than a meeting. For instance, informationto be distributed may be placed on the web, and a relevant person may beinstructed to access it, and a verification method such as auditing orself-acknowledgment that the information was viewed. Other informationmight be collected from many sources without gathering together allattendees.

However, some meetings are more effectively conducted by having aninteractive participation among a number of attendees, but do notrequire all attendees of the meeting to participate. Embodiments inaccordance with the present invention provide that such meetings takeplace in parallel and provide a concurrency of agenda items. Suchconcurrency may make the overall meeting shorter, more efficient andmore effective because sub-meetings are attended only by relevantparties, while other attendees are able to participate in otheractivities more relevant to the attendee or the organization.Furthermore, some embodiments in accordance with the present inventionmay also provide more efficient and more effective meeting by providinga “peek” capability, such that attendees can determine more preciselywhen their attendance is needed, and attend meetings or sub-meetingsonly closer to or when their attendance is needed.

Understanding data dependencies is important in implementing concurrentmeetings. No meeting can run more quickly than the longest chain ofdependent resources (e.g., decision-makers, required attendees, etc.),since actions that depend upon prior actions in the chain must be madein proper sequence. However, most meeting do not involve just a longchain of dependent resources and actions; there are usuallyopportunities to execute independent actions in parallel.

Data dependency is an issue in being able to exploit concurrency that isinherent to meetings. During the implementation of a process tosubdivide a meeting agenda, data dependency between two side sessionsmay involve access to information developed from one side session, ordecisions made in the one side session, in a second side session.Further dependencies imply further access time or more inter-sessioncommunication in case of exploiting concurrency. This, accordingly,degrades the ability to increase the amount of concurrency. Thus, it isimportant to study and analyze data dependencies in a process to exploitconcurrency in a meeting. Issues include: how to reduce block or sidesession dependencies; how to reduce access time to key persons in themeetings; and the impact of side session dependencies in being able toexploit meeting concurrency.

Detection of opportunities for concurrencies involves finding sets ofagenda items that can be performed simultaneously. The approach toconcurrency is based on the study of data dependencies. Embodiments inaccordance with the present invention may take into account any numberof relevant data dependencies, such as availability of key persons orkey facilities. Embodiments in accordance with the present invention mayprovide an incremental approach to determining dependencies. Forexample, a system in accordance with an embodiment of the invention maystart by assigning key persons to topics and determine an attendancestatus of the key persons. The embodiments may then consider a nextconstraint (e.g., if the purpose of the meeting is to consider a capitalexpenditure, then allocating a budget for the expenditure may be aprerequisite to selecting an item to purchase or its optional features).The embodiments may then consider additional constraints to concurrency(i.e., parallelism) based upon data dependencies. The presence ofdependence between two agenda items implies that they cannot beperformed in parallel. In general, the fewer the dependencies, thegreater the parallelism.

Automation of meeting dynamics may involve usage of metrics to determinescheduling. Scheduling in a simple form may be considered a process ofchoosing which of a plurality of topics should be addressed first.Scheduling in a more complex form may be considered a process ofanalyzing multiple permutations of the topics. The processes used toperform scheduling will attempt to satisfy all constraints in a way thattends to maximize an overall measure of merit. Specific schedulingmetrics may include the overall time length of the meeting orsub-meeting, the average meeting time for participants, and so forth.Scheduling metrics may also take into account a weighting of theimportance of the time of certain participants. For instance, anexecutive's time (e.g., that of a CEO, CTO, etc.) should be minimized,whereas if certain participants have a personal interest in the subjectmatter then they can be allocated or scheduled a greater amount ofmeeting time on their personal schedule, thereby maximizing an overallinterest factor subject to personal schedule and interests on varioustopics. Personal interests may be determined by polling participants fora ranking on a predetermined scale (e.g., a scale of 0 to 5). Automationof meeting dynamics may also provide delayed rescheduling for real-timeupdates.

As a meeting takes place, meeting status can be tracked and madeavailable to attendees, including key persons, by use of a “peek”capability. Upon peeking, an attendee can more accurately estimate whentheir presence is needed in the meeting. Peeking is described in greaterdetail

Some types of meetings may comprise repetitions of certain processes orsubject matter, i.e., discrete agenda items that may have internal datadependencies but not data dependencies that span across other agendaitems. For example, some organizations are chosen such that the BudgetCommittee and the Membership Committee have no overlap, so theirmeetings may be scheduled in parallel. Such concurrencies can beidentified and exploited relatively easily. However, there are meetingsfor which dependencies vary from one agenda item to another, and thesemeetings are more difficult to analyze, but still tractable. When two ormore agenda items have similar dependencies, it means that they exhibitsimilar parallel properties.

Some types of meetings may be so intertwined, in light of the agenda,that no advantage can be gained by conducting the meeting concurrently.

Examples of Concurrent Meetings

Committee Reports. In many organizations that adhere to Robert's Rulesof Order, committee reports are read to the complete assembly. In somecontexts, those reports may simply be passively posted on a web site,etc., in order to save time. But passively allowing access to theinformation does not ensure scrutiny of the information by theappropriate audience. Embodiments in accordance with the presentinvention can improve efficiency, while providing a greater level ofscrutiny, by discussing several reports concurrently in side sessions,while ensuring that each report is presented to an appropriate quorum inthe side session.

A Lecture with Group Discussions. A first half of a training sessionincludes a lecture that one person gives to 100 attendees. A second halfof the training session includes ten group discussions of ten peopleeach. The groups may be chosen statically beforehand (e.g., foruniformity or diversity across geography or functional groups), ordynamically (e.g., after taking a brief online quiz, discussion groupsmay be formed to reinforce the areas where attendees had difficulty; orif attendees may have different foci of interest, such as customersupport training sessions for different product lines).

An Evaluation Committee. For example, a group of twenty members may beassigned the task of selecting a predetermined number of submissions andrejecting the rest of the submissions. Examples of submissions mayinclude: papers for a technical symposium; new ideas at a suggestionbox; new business proposals; or invention disclosures for furtherconsideration. The evaluation committee may initially convene in full todiscuss the threshold or overall goal of the committee (e.g., to acceptabout ten of the thirty submitted papers, etc.). Thereafter, the fullcommittee may be divided into a plurality of subcommittees, each todiscuss a subset of the submissions that were assigned to thesubcommittee. Each subcommittee ranks their assigned submissionsaccording to a predetermined scale (e.g., “probable accept,” “probablereject,” and “undecided”). Subcommittee members may use a “peeking”capability to determine more precisely when their attendance is neededat subcommittees that are high priority or of more interest, so thatmembers can attend subcommittees of lower priority or lower interest ifthey so choose. When an initial phase of the work of the subcommitteeshas concluded, the entire evaluation committee may reconvene to reporttheir status (e.g., how many submissions assigned to each category). Thesubcommittees may then reconvene for additional ranking, taking intoaccount information from the full committee before reaching a conclusionwithin the subcommittee and defending that decision to the fullcommittee.

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention provide a systemthat starts with an initial agenda, and keeps track of who is present atall times. For e-conferences, tracking attendance can be implemented bythe web conferencing tool used to host the e-conference. For physicalconferences, tracking attendance may be implemented by use of RFIDchips, for instance an RFID chip embedded within a badge issued toparticipants at a physical conference. The agenda allows dynamicelectronic conferences (“e-conferences”) to change easily in response tounforeseen conditions, such as the level of interest by participants, orthe availability of participants. The single agenda allows concurrentsub-conferences to have topics discussed in parallel. Both the dynamicand concurrent features are facilitated by the agenda. The agendafacilitates dynamic and concurrent features because the agenda stateswhat is needed for each topic to be discussed, such as people who shouldparticipate in the topic discussion, and previous topics. Embodiments inaccordance with the present invention provide a process that examinesthe current agenda and attendance list, both of which may be dynamicallymodified to reflect what has been discussed in the meeting so far and toreflect who has entered or left the meeting, and then reports whattopics are ready for discussion. The report of what topics are ready fordiscussion may be provided to participants by way of the peekingcapability described herein. A similar process may search for and reportopportunities for concurrent discussion. Dynamic and concurrent featuresmay be implemented independently, but they become more responsive toparticipant interest and availability when the dynamic and concurrentfeatures are used together. Concurrency may be relatively more useful inlarge meetings that have more opportunities for concurrency, therebymaking those conferences shorter.

Technical Details

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention provide a systemthat starts with an initial agenda. The agenda comprises a sequence oftopics with associated properties such as discussion times and requiredparticipants. The system keeps track of who is attending the meeting atall times, e.g., via a web conferencing tool hosting the e-conference.Each topic has a pre-determined quorum, which may be as few as only atopic leader. The quorum may identify additional specific requiredattendees, or just identify a minimum number of attendees. More complexquorum requirements may be accommodated, such as “at least two membersof a first committee, and three members of a second committee.” Topicsmay also have “topic dependencies” (such as a “prerequisite topic”), forexample a “budget” topic may have to be discussed before discussing a“new expenditures” topic. In another example of a topic dependency,decisions may have to be made in one topic (e.g., an executive topic)and the resulting decisions carried out in another topic (e.g., ascheduling topic). Topic dependencies may also include datadependencies, people dependencies (e.g., a simple list or a complexquorum rule), previous topics, key documents, and explicit approvals(e.g., in order to discuss a particular topic, a document needs to becompleted and signed).

Two or more topics can be discussed concurrently if they havenon-overlapping quorums and have no topic dependencies, i.e., if neithertopic depends on the other. There are at least two approaches togenerating concurrency: searching for concurrency that is inherent in aparticular agenda, and manufacturing concurrency intentionally, forinstance by rearranging the agenda. A process that identifiesconcurrency should at least identify data dependencies between topics,and identify a list of the required presence of key attendees for givingor receiving information. Data dependencies may also include for eachtopic an identification of key persons who need to be present (i.e.,quorum rules) and key persons authorized to make decisions. Quorum rulesmay be complex, for instance a quorum rule may be “we must have PersonsA, B and C, at least one person from committees D, E and F, and a totalof 9 people.”

At some point when there is insufficient concurrency, the overheadinvolved in searching for concurrency and setting up concurrent meetingsmay overtake any savings gained from concurrency. For instance, onewould not likely try to set up concurrent meetings that last just oneminute. In some embodiments, concurrent meetings may not be set up ifthey involve too few participants or would result in too many concurrentmeetings. Embodiments in accordance with the present invention includeheuristics to determine whether a potential gain from concurrency is (oris not) enough to satisfy the effort and overhead to set it up. Forexample, a fixed overhead may be included to account for the time spentsplitting off into a sub-meeting (e.g., three minutes), and anotherfixed overhead to account for the time spent rejoining the main meeting(e.g., two more minutes). Other time penalties may also be included,e.g., a four minute penalty to account for a loss of productivity asparticipants mentally shift their mindset from one submeeting topic toanother submeeting topic. A process in accordance with an embodiment ofthe invention would then partition a topic into concurrent subtopicsonly if the benefit exceeds the cost.

A process to search for concurrency can compare all topics in an agenda.The process may start with identifying topics that can be discussed inparallel without modification. For example, if the people required fortopic “A” and topic “B” are entirely disjoint (i.e., non-overlapping),then topic “A” and topic “B” can be conducted in parallel. However, ifthe quorum is given in terms of “one person from a first committee” and“one person from a second committee,” then the process may partition themeeting and concurrently schedule topic “A” and topic “B.”

If two topics both have met all prerequisites (e.g., topics, decisions,and availability of data that will be needed during discussion of thetopics) and have a non-overlapping set of required attendees and nodependencies on data or decisions, then those two topics may bediscussed in parallel as concurrent topics in sub-sessions. Embodimentsin accordance with the present invention may provide an ability tosuggest changes to the agenda, and the moderator can approve the changesto the agenda. The required participants may then be placed in thesub-sessions, and non-required meeting attendees can choose to attendthe sub-session or to stay in the current meeting. Embodiments inaccordance with the present invention provide an efficient process fordetecting and exploiting such parallelism. Changes to the agenda may bereported to participants as part of the peeking process describedherein.

Manufacturing Concurrency. In some meetings, a leader may wish to dividea large main group into subgroups. In this situation, the leaderidentifies the topics that have no mutual dependencies (e.g., personnel,data, or decision dependencies), and the leader assigns key people toeach topic, and may appoint a leader of the subgroup. Assignation ofpersons to a topic may include an indication of the requiredness of anidentified person, i.e., an indication of how much that participation bythe identified person is either required desired. For instance, somepersons may be essential, whereas other persons may be preferred and yetother persons on a “for your information (FYI)” basis. Requiredness mayalso be indicated on a scale, e.g., a scale from 1 to 5. Quorum mayinclude threshold attendance levels by each level of requiredness, forinstance all persons identified as essential, at least 50% of personsidentified as preferred, and no minimum on the number of FYI persons.

FYI persons may include persons who are able (but not required) to joina topic, based upon their personal interest. A computer-implementedsystem to maintain the agenda topics may include controls thatfacilitate dividing the large group into subgroups in this manner. Sucha system may also include a control or an ability by the leader of asubgroup to merge the subgroup back into the main group. The topics mayinclude a single topic in which the leader sees two distinct subtopics,or two topics that the leader feels have little or no overlap. Forexample, the Lecture with Group Discussions and the Evaluation Committeereferenced earlier both may be subject to a manufactured concurrency. Apeeking capability as described herein may be useful to FYI persons whomay also be essential persons for another topic. Such FYI persons mayattend the FYI topic while using “peeking” to monitor progress ofanother topic, and then leave the FYI topic when the person's attendanceat the other topic is closer to being needed.

Compliance with quorum may be monitored dynamically, providing a dynamicquorum compliance monitoring with an attendance status set eitherexplicitly (e.g., a “check-in” and/or check-out” control), or inferredby a level of activity (e.g., active participation by spoken or writtenactions; accessing resources under discussion within the topic;activating a positive confirmation of activity, such as “click here tocontinue” or “logoff for inactivity in one minute”, etc.). The meetingmoderator may be warned if the attendance as determined by the dynamicquorum compliance monitoring drops below quorum.

Nature of Venue. “Venue” as used herein may refer to either a physicalvenue for a conference, or refer to a virtual context for ane-conference. The virtual context may host the e-conference via atelephone bridge, a textual chat room, a set of video streams or thelike. In some cases, a small subcommittee of a major e-conference may bespun off into a new venue, while the remainder of the major e-conferencecontinues in its original venue. In other cases, sub-sessions of a majorconference may be assigned to new sub-venues, while the original meetingvenue is maintained as a meeting place when the sub-sessions havecompleted their work. In yet other contexts, the original venue may beclosed or dissolved, and only the sub-venues are available. Which choiceis appropriate is a policy choice that can be parameterized in a system,and presented to a user as a menu of choices to select among or toenable.

Manual Override. Embodiments in accordance with the present inventioncan be designed to reflect a variety of policies regarding the processof scheduling concurrent meetings and/or the weighting given to variousconsiderations. One policy may involve an aggressiveness factor used todetermine how aggressively to try to exploit concurrency, with choicessuch as: (a) allow no concurrency at all; (b) suggest concurrency butdon't enforce it; (c) attempt to induce as much concurrency as possible;or (d) mandate all possible concurrency. Other policies may decideissues such as which participants go to which meetings. A policy may bemanually overridden by users with appropriate permissions, such as ameeting organizer.

Advanced Criteria. Embodiments in accordance with the present inventionare able to identify candidate pairs of concurrent topics. Embodimentsmay further perform more complex analysis, such as identifyingconcurrency among three or more topics. The system may then attempt toorganize an entire meeting to meet various optimization criteria, suchas minimizing total duration time, or by calculating a sum of timesweighted by an importance value of the participants, while not exceedinga maximum concurrency. Such optimization may be performed once, before astatic concurrent meeting, or many times throughout a dynamic concurrentmeeting.

Tracking Meeting Progress. Tracking the progress of static meetings(i.e., meetings with a fixed agenda) is straightforward. However,tracking the progress of a dynamic meeting is more subtle and harder.Each sub-session may be progressing at a different rate, and thesub-sessions may represent unequal shares of the overall agenda. Thismay influence an ability to change the order in which topics arediscussed. For example, in a conventional static meeting, a participantmay be able to know that the meeting is in the middle of item 7, andthat therefore the previous agenda items (i.e., items 1-6) are finishedand that subsequent items (i.e., items 8-17) are unfinished. In adynamic meeting, a participant may know that the meeting has finisheditems 1, 2, and 3, then moved on to 7, finished half of that, and thenmoved back to 5. In a conventional meeting, a bookmark may represent asingle number (i.e., the current agenda topic). In a dynamic meeting, abookmark may represent a list of topics that have been finished andtopics that are unfinished.

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention provide tools forpresenting the meeting progress to users in different ways, or measuringthe meeting progress in different ways. For instance, progress may bemeasured by the number of agenda items resolved. Or progress may bemeasured by comparing the actual amount of time spent for an agenda itemto the amount of time that the agenda item was estimated to take. Theuser interface may include graphical forms in order to see the overallstructure of the meeting. Color may be used, for instance red formeetings behind forecast, and green for meetings on-time. Meetingprogress may be presented to a participant as part of a “peeking”process described herein.

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention include a systemthat provides an integrated agenda and topic management. In the agendamodel, an agenda is a collection of topics, together with the requiredor desired participants for each topic. Participants may also bereferred to herein as attendees. Participants may be ranked to indicatehow important their presence or participation is to meaningfully addressthe topic. Topics include an indication of dependencies betweendifferent topics, and the participants required or desired for eachtopic.

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention provide a systemthat helps automate agenda planning. The system can help write an agendafrom scratch, and can provide an instant agenda setup and plan ahead.The system may also provide a view of the progress during the meeting ofaddressing topics on the agenda. The view may be by way of the peekingprocess described herein. Meeting progress may be inputted into thesystem by moderator control, e.g., by the moderator activating a “finishtopic” or “next topic” button. Progress can be visually displayed inorder to more easily convey the status of the meeting or sub-meetingsthereof.

In embodiments of the integrated agenda and topics model of the presentinvention, participants may have different roles for different topics. Afirst role is that of a topic leader, who has authority to finishtopics, i.e., to declare the topic finished. The topic leader may alsospawn new topics if so deemed by the subcommittee. Initial quorum anddata dependencies of a new topic may initially be empty, or the newtopic may inherit those attributes from its parent topic. Another roleis that of the minute taker who generates the minutes for each topic.There may be one dedicated official note taker (e.g., a meetingsecretary). Alternatively, the meeting could be opened up to let anyonetake notes. The notes may be opened up without restrictions, or thenotes may be restricted to only open them to certain people. Anotherrole is that of a moderator, who generally will guide a discussionforward toward consensus and/or decisions. A single person may act inmore than one role. Other types of roles may also be available or used.In some contexts the topic leader may concentrate on the topic itself,while the moderator might hurry things along or slow things down, orpoint out that a particular person has not been heard yet, etc.

Embodiments of the integrated agenda and topics model of the presentinvention may further support topic history, for instance by assistingin relating the contents of active discussions with topics from theagenda. For example, embodiments in accordance with the presentinvention may provide a system to deduce when a topic has changed,either by pauses and word analysis, or be looking for a keyword (such as“next”). The contents may include notes, chat history, audio or visualrecordings, a record of votes taken, etc. By relating contents to topicsin this way, embodiments in accordance with the present invention areable to provide better context tracking, i.e., a more thoroughdescription of the background of a discussion or explanation of howdecisions were arrived at. The topic history will become a part of themeeting minutes.

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention also assist in theautomation of meeting dynamics. Dynamics, as used herein, may refer tochanges in the schedule. Changes may arise from external events thataffect the schedules of individual participants, such as last-minuteadditions or cancellation of other, unrelated meetings. Changes may alsoarise as a result of discussions within the sub-session, e.g., it maybecome apparent the additional topics are needed or somepreviously-scheduled topics are moot, based upon the outcome ofdiscussions during the sub-session. There may also be topic overflowand/or topic underflow. Overflow is when a topic is running too long(e.g., a 10-minute topic lasts for 20 minutes), and underflow is when atopic is running too short (e.g., a 10-minute topic lasts for 5minutes).

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention include an improvedprocess for topic and meeting scheduling. In one embodiment, a “greedy”process is used, in the sense that the process will select the bestchoice at the time of selection (e.g., a local maximum), with little orno look-ahead for a maximum over a wider field of selection (e.g., aglobal maximum). In such an embodiment, instead of trying to find theoptimal permutation of all topics, the greedy method first chooses thebest among all current topics, then the best topic among the remainingtopics, and so forth. That might not be as good as considering all thefuture consequences. In this process, a topic starts if dependenciesamong topics are resolved, resulting in a preliminary schedule, order,ranking, or the like among topics. Also, quorum requirements (i.e.,attendance policies) for the topic have to be satisfied, for instance ifthree out of four panel members are present. A topic may be finished orclosed by either the topic leader, or by consensus among theparticipants of the sub-meeting. The quorum requirement may be set bythe topic chairman and/or other members of the subcommittee. Anattendance policy may be either required or optional, and it may alsoapply to representatives from a set of committee.

Other embodiments of dividing an agenda into multiple concurrent topicsor meetings may be used. For example, a simple approach is to considerall subsets in order, i.e., every combination or permutation of groupingthe topics into two or more concurrent topics. The simple approach leadsto a process having an exponential running time, i.e., the running timeincreases exponentially with the number of topics and/or concurrentsessions to consider. However, the simple process may be feasible if thenumber of topics is small. More advanced processes may have less thanexponential running time.

Another embodiment of dividing an agenda into multiple concurrent topicsor meetings may be to start with two or more empty groups of topics. Afirst subtopic is assigned to the first group. For each subsequenttopic, sort the groups of topics into a list sorted by increasing agendalength, i.e., after sorting the first group on the sorted list will havethe shortest agenda. Then assign the subsequent topic to the grouphaving the shortest agenda and which would have no resource conflict ordata conflict at that time. For example, suppose there are three groupsof topics (A, B, C) and assigning the subsequent topic to group A of thesorted list would produce a resource conflict with group B, then thesubsequent topic may be assigned to group B if there would be noresource or data conflict with group C. However, if assigning thesubsequent topic to group B would produce a resource conflict with groupC, then the subsequent topic would be assigned to group C. Theassignment of the subsequent topic to a group of topic may be byscheduling the subsequent topic at the end of the group's agenda or maybe by scheduling the subsequent topic at a point not at the end (e.g.,inserted in the middle of the agenda so long as there is no conflictwith other groups of topics at that time). This process is repeated foreach topic.

Another embodiment of dividing an agenda into multiple concurrent topicsor meetings may be to bin-pack the topics into two or more proposedgroups of topics. If resource dependencies or data dependencies existamong the proposed groups of topics, the agenda order of one or moregroups of topics may be permuted to try to resolve the resource or datadependency. If no permutation of any of the group(s) of topics producesa conflict-free concurrent meeting agenda, then a topic from one groupof topics may be reassigned to another of the groups of topics, and thegroups would be reanalyzed for resource or data dependencies.

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention provide usercontrol of dynamics, wherein the user may be any of the persons or rolesdiscussed above, e.g., the organizer, moderator, discussion leader,lecturer, etc. For example, a lecturer might decide that even though thenext topic is “A,” the discussion will move to “K” instead because ofinterest by attendees. Examples of dynamics that can be controlled mayfurther include topic notification, identification of backupparticipants, and dynamic agenda modification. Embodiments in accordancewith the present invention may attempt to meet the constraints andmaximize a satisfaction function. A manual override (e.g., an overrideof topic changes) may also be provided.

Topic notification may include automatic notification by the system thatthe start time to discuss a topic is drawing near, as determined by thesystem by tracking topic progress. Alternatively, a moderator can notifytopic attendees that the start time to discuss a topic is drawing near.The benefit for attendees of the notification is that more efficient useis made of the participants' time. Participants do not need to sitthrough topics in which they have little interest, so that they do notmiss some portion of the topic that they are interested in. Thisprovides more efficient time management for the participants.

Identification of backup participants may refer to designation of abackup participant when a user leaves the conference. A participant cankeep up a meeting context using a backup participant. A backupparticipant, for instance, may be someone who participates in decisionsand studies, but who does not exercise a voting authority until andunless a primary participant is unable to participate. This is similarto the concept of alternate jurors at a trial. An advantage ofdesignating backup participants is that if a primary participant isunable to continue participating, then there is less impact to theoverall topic progress and schedule of other participants by usage ofbackup participants. The substitution of a backup participant may be byuse of person who is already at the meeting (i.e., an internal request),or by use of a person not already at the meeting (i.e., an externalrequest). There may be adopted various policies with respect to usage ofbackup participants, such as having multiple levels or layers of backupparticipants, setting a maximum number of backup participants that canbe used, defining a policy whether participants who leave in favor ofthe backup participant can later rejoin, and so forth. These policiesmay be set in advance by the moderator, either with or without reviewand discussion by topic participants.

Dynamic agenda modification refers to a capability to introduce newtopics in the agenda, defer topics, close out topics, or tocancel/discarded topics during a meeting, rearrange an order ofpresentation of topics, etc. Such actions may be undertaken by a personwith sufficient privileges such as the moderator.

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention provide for thecapability to have concurrent discussions, concurrent sub-sessions, andthe like. The types of discussions that are amenable to being heldconcurrently, or the properties that they should have, include that thesubject matter from one sub-session to another should be independent,i.e., the subject matter should not be dependent upon informationdeveloped within other sub-sessions or dependent upon decisions made atanother sub-session. Another kind of concurrency occurs whensub-discussion groups are formed to address portions or aspects of alarger problem or objective. For example, a concurrency may be formed bystating that participants can go to any one of these three choices.However, if a user is given just a list of topics and the peoplerequired at each topic, the system may search for and/or extractconcurrency.

Once concurrency is identified, the concurrency is utilized by firstrecognizing concurrent discussions based on the agenda. For example,there should be no overlapping quorum requirements between proposedconcurrent discussions, and there should be no dependency indecision-making or data production between proposed concurrentdiscussions.

Second, concurrency is recognized by finding a set of candidate topicsthat is appropriate for concurrent scheduling. Considerations for suchcandidate topics include the number of topics that can be scheduled atthe same time, and finding candidate topics that are scheduled to haveabout the same amount of time.

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention also include anability to provide a meeting synopsis. The meeting synopsis may be, forinstance, in the form of a meeting snapshot (i.e., a “peek” at themeeting status at a selected time), or an ability to provide a meetinghistory. The meeting history may involve, after the meeting is over, aprocess of merging the original agenda, the record of what actuallyhappened (i.e., the “dynamics”), the attendance, and any notes takeninto a complete history, which is often referred to as the “minutes” ofthe meeting.

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention may also allowinvited participants to “peek” into the meeting to see the currentstatus of the meeting. At physical meetings, a person might open thedoor and see a speaker standing to make his presentation, and know thatthe invited participant's portion is next. Embodiments in accordancewith the present invention provide an electronic peek in order toelectronically provide the current status of the meeting, and/or whattopics have been discussed, attendance, upcoming agenda items, etc.

The meeting snapshot may provide a one-time view of the meeting statusat a time selected by the user. The meeting status may include anindication of the progress of the meeting, so that the user can decidewhether to join the meeting at that time. For example, a notification toa speaker may be of the form “you are due up in 5 minutes”. In contrast,a snapshot provides a view of the current state of the meeting. Thesnapshot may also include one or more visual displays, such as a view ofpresentations being made to the meeting, or a webcam display of theproceedings, and so forth.

The meeting history may be assembled from a combination of one or moreof the agenda, meeting dynamics, topic minutes, notes by a designatedperson such as a recording secretary, and so forth. The meeting dynamicsmay include a record of the actual meeting, such as a transcript of whatwas spoken, or an audio and/or visual recording. An advantage of arecord of the actual meeting is that meeting dynamics (e.g., changes inthe schedule, etc.) may become more apparent and therefore providebetter background preparation to the person entering the meeting.

The meeting snapshot features support an ability to peek into ane-conference while the e-conference is in progress, in order todetermine status or progress toward agenda items. The meeting history iscomplete only after the meeting is done. Such a peeking capability maybe useful if a person wants to attend a portion of a meeting that is ofinterest to that person, but wants to lessen the amount of time spentattending other portions of the meeting devoted to other discussionshaving relatively less interest to the person. Embodiments in accordancewith the present invention allow a person who is not presently attendingor participating in a meeting to monitor or to obtain a snapshot view ofthe status of the meeting, in order to determine whether to enter themeeting, or to estimate when the person should enter the meeting, toperiodically monitor progress of the meeting, and so forth. Such asnapshot view or monitoring may or may not be obtained anonymously,without the knowledge or observation by other participants in themeeting. An anonymous snapshot may be a matter of policy that may beparameterized. For example, whether only invitees are allowed to peekinto a meeting, or can a supervisor of an attendee peek into themeeting. Anonymity may refer to a lack of notification of anunidentified peeker, or may extend to a lack of notification of theanonymous snapshot itself (e.g., attendees know someone peeked but notexactly who did so), or public. The choice may depend upon the contexts.An anonymous snapshot or monitoring may also be useful in situationswhere either the act of monitoring or not monitoring may influencebehavior of meeting participants, such as that of a supervisormonitoring performance of a customer service representative in a meetingwith a customer.

Peeking may be useful in certain conference contexts, such as anagenda-driven conference system. In a telephone-based system, forinstance, after giving a security code in order to join a conference, aperson may be offered a choice whether to join the conference or tomonitor the conference in a peeking mode. Peeking may be implementedwith a limited form of access, with the access controlled by amoderator. For example, peeking may provide only a limited view of whatis going on in the meeting, peeking may not be anonymous, and peekingmay be implemented in a listen-only mode. Contextual information may beprovided (e.g., the number of present attendees, identification of keyattendees presently attending, etc.) and the current position in astatic agenda. Contextual information may be provided, for instance, byway of a text message, voice response system, access to a web page, andso forth.

When a conference is initially organized, embodiments in accordance withthe present invention may provide an invitation to participants. Theinvitation may contain a first link that allows the user to join intothe conference as a fully participating member. The invitation may alsocontain a second link that allows the user to “peek” into theconference, to determine its current status. When the user clicks on thelink, the user's peeking privileges will be verified by the agendaserver. The result of the peek is a snapshot of the conference that mayinclude at least one or more of the following: (a) What topics havealready been discussed, and the discussion time devoted to each topic;(b) What topics have yet to be discussed, and the estimated times atwhich they will be discussed and/or their estimated durations; (c) Whattopics are ready to be discussed as soon as this participant joins; and(d) A list of attendees that are currently attending or have attendedthe meeting.

Alternative embodiments in accordance with the present invention mayprovide one or more of the following options, choices, abilities,parameters controllable during real-time, and so forth, as denoted orallowed or enabled by the person's peeking privileges: (a) an optionaland controllable ability to limit the number of peeks that a person mayuse, which may be useful for sensitive topics; (b) Whether or not otherconference members are informed of a person joining in a peeking mode;(c) Whether or not other conference members are informed of the identityof a person joining in peeking mode; (d) Should the peeker be allowedfull or partial access, for instance by restricting access to onlytopics of interest to the peeker; (e) Should the peeker see the completeattendance, or just people related to his topics; (f) Is peekingpermitted for all participants, or only for a participants havingsufficient privilege. Full or partial access may be denied to personswho are not authorized to peek at the conference.

Embodiments in accordance with the present invention, in providingpeeking, provide a method for monitoring an electronic meeting, suchthat the electronic meeting is conducted among remotely-located usersvia one or more communication links with an agenda server, in which themethod includes receiving a peek request from a remotely-located user;verifying a peek privilege of the remotely-located user; and providing astatus of the electronic meeting based upon the peek privilege. Thestatus of the electronic meeting may include one or more of: a list ofcovered topics and a respective duration of the covered topics; a listof topics not covered and a respective estimated duration of the topicsnot covered; a list of topics to be covered if the remotely-located userjoins the electronic meeting; an attendance list; and a list of coveredtopics and a respective duration of the covered topics

The peek privilege, in accordance with an embodiment of the presentinvention, may include one or more of: a controllable limit on thenumber of peeks that the remotely-located user may use; an indicationwhether to inform other conference members of the remotely-located userpeeking in the electronic meeting; an access level of theremotely-located user; and a permission level to access an attendancelist.

FIG. 1 illustrates a schematic view of system 100 in accordance with anembodiment of the present invention. System 100 includes: an agendaserver 102; a conferencing application 104 that is accessibleelectronically, such as OpenMeetings or other client/server conferencingapplication accessible via the internet; a web browser used to access amultimedia development tool 106 such as OpenLaszlo; and a database 108,which are functionally interconnected as shown. Database 108 may bephysically separate from agenda server 102, or may be incorporated indata storage within agenda server 108.

Agenda server 102 retrieves information related to agenda 110 viaREpresentational State Transfer (“REST”) services. Agenda server 102prepares an agenda view 112, for instance by use of a Java applet, whichis then displayed by use of multimedia development tool 106. Agendaserver 102 further exchanges information, via flash XML socket, withmultimedia development tool 106 in order to prepare and/or display alist of events 114. Online conferencing application 104 communicateswith agenda server 102 in order to create and manage the room/invitationlist 116. Invitation list 116 may be, for example, a list ofparticipants for the meeting and a list of participants for each agendaitem. The interface between online conferencing application 104 andagenda server 102 may be via Simple Object Access Protocol (“SOAP”),which is known as a protocol specification for exchanging structuredinformation in the implementation of Web Services in computer networks.SOAP relies on Extensible Markup Language (XML) for its message format.Online conferencing application 104 further communicates with multimediadevelopment tool 106 via HTTP messages, in order to produce meeting view118.

As the meeting progresses, progress toward agenda items is noted usingmultimedia development tool 106. Meeting status as maintained by agendaserver 102 is updated, and updated agenda views 112 and meeting views118 are made available.

FIG. 2 illustrates an architecture for agenda server 102. Agenda server102 may include a processor 202, a memory 204 coupled to the processor,a receiver, transmitter, transceiver 206, and/or I/O interfaces 210.Transceiver 206 couples agenda server 102 to an internal and/or externalcommunication path such as an Ethernet connection 214 or an optional RFconnection 216. RF connection 216 may be WiFi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, UWB,or similar technologies used for RF networking. I/O interfaces 210couple agenda server 102 to one or more optional user input/output (I/O)devices (e.g., display screen, keyboard, mouse, etc.). Memory 204 storesdata and/or program instructions used by processor 202. Memory 204 mayinclude permanent, non-volatile memory (e.g., ROM), or volatile memory(e.g., RAM), or rewritable memory (e.g., hard drive or flash memory), orany combination thereof. For instance, memory 204 may include database108 depicted in FIG. 1. Components of agenda server may beinterconnected by communication path 212. The program instructions, whenexecuted by processor 202, carry out the processes performed by agendaserver 102.

FIG. 3 illustrates a method 300 for identifying and implementingconcurrent e-meetings. Method 300 starts at step 302, in which an agendais provided.

At step 304, the agenda is partitioned into proposed candidatesubtopics. Subtopics may be identified by a moderator or someone ofsufficient privilege, or may be based on a template or a past similarmeeting.

At step 306, the proposed subtopics are analyzed for data dependencies.For example, if two proposed subtopics are not mutually dependent upondata arising from the other, or decisions made in the other, then thoseproposed subtopics are candidates for concurrency.

At step 308, the proposed subtopics are analyzed for resourcedependencies or conflicts. For instance, if a key decision-maker needsto participate in two different subtopics, then those subtopics are notcandidates for concurrency. At step 309, a decision is made on the basisof the analysis from step 308. If all proposed subtopics areindependent, then control passes to step 310. If not all proposedsubtopics are independent, then control passes to step 313.

At step 310, proposed subtopics are assigned to be conductedconcurrently, and process 300 concludes at step 314.

At step 313 a decision is made whether all possible permutations andcombinations have been made without finding sets of subtopics that canbe discussed concurrently. This may occur if the meeting is sointertwined that it cannot be conducted concurrently. In that situation,the meeting agenda may revert to a non-concurrent form, and the processwill stop at step 314. If not all possible permutations and combinationshave yet been made, then control passes to step 312.

At step 312, the agenda is repartitioned into a different grouping ofproposed subtopics, and control passes to step 306.

While the foregoing is directed to embodiments of the present invention,other and further embodiments of the present invention may be devisedwithout departing from the basic scope thereof. It is understood thatvarious embodiments described herein may be utilized in combination withany other embodiment described, without departing from the scopecontained herein. Further, the foregoing description is not intended tobe exhaustive or to limit the present invention to the precise formdisclosed. Modifications and variations are possible in light of theabove teachings or may be acquired from practice of the presentinvention.

No element, act, or instruction used in the description of the presentapplication should be construed as critical or essential to theinvention unless explicitly described as such. Also, as used herein, thearticle “a” is intended to include one or more items. Where only oneitem is intended, the term “one” or similar language is used. Further,the terms “any of” followed by a listing of a plurality of items and/ora plurality of categories of items, as used herein, are intended toinclude “any of,” “any combination of,” “any multiple of,” and/or “any”combination of multiples of the items and/or the categories of items,individually or in conjunction with other items and/or other categoriesof items.

Moreover, the claims should not be read as limited to the describedorder or elements unless stated to that effect. In addition, use of theterm “means” in any claim is intended to invoke 35 U.S.C. §112, ¶6, andany claim without the word “means” is not so intended.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method for implementing an electronic meeting,wherein the electronic meeting is conducted among remotely-located usersvia one or more communication links with an agenda server, the methodcomprising the steps of: accepting, by the agenda server, a meetingagenda comprising: a plurality of topics; an identification of resourcesused by each topic; an identification of data used by each topic; anidentification of a quorum for each topic; and an identification of dataproduced by each topic; assigning topics to at least a first group oftopics and a second group of topics, such that data dependencies andresource dependencies between the first group of topics and the secondgroup of topics are reduced below a predetermined dependency threshold;and concurrently scheduling the first group of topics and the secondgroup of topics.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of assigningtopics comprises the steps of: assigning a first topic to the firstgroup of topics; for each subsequent topic: sorting all groups of topicsby agenda length; assigning the subsequent topic to the group of topicshaving the shortest agenda length and for which there are no resourcedependencies or data dependencies at that time.
 3. The method of claim1, wherein the step of assigning topics comprises the steps of:partitioning, by the agenda server, the meeting agenda into at least afirst group of topics and a second group of topics; searching, by theagenda server, for data dependencies between the first group of topicsand the second group of topics; searching, by the agenda server, forresource dependencies between the first group of topics and the secondgroup of topics; and if data dependencies or resource dependencies arefound between the first group of topics and the second group of topics,repartitioning the meeting agenda by the agenda server until datadependencies and resource dependencies between the first group of topicsand the second group of topics are reduced below the predetermineddependency threshold; and
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein a durationof the first group of topics is within a predetermined length of time ofa duration of the second group of topics.
 5. The method of claim 1,further comprising the step of inviting a person to participateelectronically in a topic as a resource.
 6. The method of claim 3,wherein an invitation to the person comprises an indication of arequiredness of the person.
 7. The method of claim 3, further comprisingthe step of monitoring, by the agenda server, a level of participationby the person in the electronic meeting.
 8. The method of claim 3,further comprising the step of monitoring, by the agenda server, adynamic compliance with the quorum of the electronic meeting.
 9. Themethod of claim 1, wherein data dependencies comprise a datum resultingfrom the first group of topics, wherein the datum is used by the secondgroup of topics.
 10. The method of claim 1, wherein data dependenciescomprise a decision resulting from the first group of topics, whereinthe decision is concurrently needed by the second group of topics. 11.The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of determining thepredetermined dependency threshold based upon an aggressiveness factor.12. The method of claim 1, further comprising, by the agenda server, thesteps of: assigning topics to at least a third group of topics, suchthat data dependencies and resource dependencies between the first groupof topics, the second group of topics and the third group of topics arereduced below a predetermined dependency threshold; and concurrentlyscheduling the first group of topics, the second group of topics and thethird group of topics.
 13. The method of claim 1, further comprising, bythe agenda server, the steps of: assigning topics to at least a firstgroup of topics and a second group of topics, such that a total durationof the first group of topics and the second group of topics is reducedbelow a predetermined duration threshold.
 14. The method of claim 1,further comprising, by the agenda server, the steps of: assigning topicsto at least a first group of topics and a second group of topics, suchthat a sum of topic durations of the first group of topics and thesecond group of topics, when weighted by an importance value of theparticipants, is reduced below a predetermined concurrency threshold.15. The method of claim 1, further comprising, by the agenda server, thesteps of: monitoring a progress of the electronic meeting in addressinga topic; and presenting an indicator of the progress to remotely-locatedusers via the one or more communication links with the agenda server.16. A method for monitoring an electronic meeting, wherein theelectronic meeting is conducted among remotely-located users via one ormore communication links with an agenda server, the method comprisingthe steps of: receiving a peeking request from a remotely-located user;verifying a peeking privilege of the remotely-located user; andproviding a status of the electronic meeting based upon the peekingprivilege.
 17. The method of claim 16, wherein the status of theelectronic meeting comprises: a list of covered topics and a respectiveduration of the covered topics.
 18. The method of claim 16, wherein thestatus of the electronic meeting comprises: a list of topics not coveredand a respective estimated duration of the topics not covered.
 19. Themethod of claim 16, wherein the status of the electronic meetingcomprises: a list of topics to be covered if the remotely-located userjoins the electronic meeting.
 20. The method of claim 16, wherein thestatus of the electronic meeting comprises: an attendance list.
 21. Themethod of claim 16, wherein the status of the electronic meetingcomprises: a list of covered topics and a respective duration of thecovered topics.
 22. The method of claim 16, wherein the peekingprivilege comprises: a controllable limit on the number of peeks thatthe remotely-located user may use.
 23. The method of claim 16, whereinthe peeking privilege comprises: an indication whether to inform otherconference members of the remotely-located user peeking in theelectronic meeting.
 24. The method of claim 16, wherein the peekingprivilege comprises: an access level of the remotely-located user. 25.The method of claim 16, wherein the peeking privilege comprises: apermission level to access an attendance list.
 26. A system forimplementing an electronic meeting, wherein the electronic meeting isconducted among remotely-located users via one or more communicationlinks, comprising: an agenda server, comprising a processor and a memorycoupled to the processor, the memory configured to store instructionsthat when performed by the processor implement the steps of: accepting,by the agenda server, a meeting agenda comprising: a plurality oftopics; an identification of resources used by each topic; anidentification of data used by each topic; an identification of a quorumfor each topic; and an identification of data produced by each topic;assigning topics to at least a first group of topics and a second groupof topics, such that data dependencies and resource dependencies betweenthe first group of topics and the second group of topics are reducedbelow a predetermined dependency threshold; concurrently scheduling thefirst group of topics and the second group of topics; a communicationinterface to a conferencing application server; and a communicationinterface to a remotely-located user.
 27. The system of claim 13,wherein the memory is further configured to store instructions that,when performed by the processor, assign topics to groups such that aduration of the first group of topics is within a predetermined lengthof time of a duration of the second group of topics.
 28. The system ofclaim 13, wherein the memory is further configured to store instructionsthat, when performed by the processor, invite a person to participateelectronically in a topic as a resource.
 29. The system of claim 15,wherein an invitation to the person comprises an indication of arequiredness of the person.
 30. The system of claim 15, wherein thememory is further configured to store instructions that, when performedby the processor, monitor, by the agenda server, a level ofparticipation by the person in the electronic meeting.
 31. The system ofclaim 15, wherein the memory is further configured to store instructionsthat, when performed by the processor, monitor, by the agenda server, adynamic quorum of the electronic meeting.
 32. The system of claim 15,wherein the memory is further configured to store instructions that,when performed by the processor, provide, by the agenda server, acapability to allow a an invited person to peek at a status of theelectronic meeting.
 33. The system of claim 13, wherein datadependencies comprise a datum resulting from the first group of topics,wherein the datum is used by the second group of topics.
 34. The systemof claim 13, wherein data dependencies comprise a decision resultingfrom the first group of topics, wherein the decision is used by thesecond group of topics.
 35. The system of claim 13, wherein the memoryis further configured to store instructions that, when performed by theprocessor, perform the steps of: monitoring a progress of the electronicmeeting in addressing a topic; and presenting an indicator of theprogress to remotely-located users via the one or more communicationlinks with the agenda server.